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It's not made for permanence. In the second place, the type is usually too small for many a book lover.
But how many people are there that are real book lovers?
There are enough. I think that the paperback has been a boon to publishing in more ways than one. The reprint rights now are what keep a lot of hardbound publishers from going bankrupt. It's the subsidiary rights that keep them on the right side of the ledger; and if they haven't got a paperback sale, most of the time the book doesn't make expenses. In the second place, paperbacks encourage the reading habit. People start reading paperbacks. Some of them, a small percentage, will graduate to the hardbound books. So we are creating new readers with paperbacks. In the third place, it's providing books for people who can't afford the hardbound books, and that's the greatest plus of all. For the student, it's wonderful. When I went to college, if you were referred to some rather expensive book, there would be two copies in the Columbia University libraries. One hundred and eighty-two students would try to get those two copies at the same time. Today they can all go and buy the book for 75¢ in paperback.
Of course that helps the book industry because before you only had two books sold.
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